I just went through the EU black list of carriers available online, and was surprised to find out how many are still MISSING from the list that in my mind would just as well have to be there.

What is the list criteria based on? Why is there Phuket Airlines, for instance, and not Orient Thai? None of the Russians are there but a list half full of Congo carriers which probably don't even have a single a/c capable of reaching the EU region by flying?

I would have another list as long with ideas of airliners to throw in, if anyone knows what these picks are based on..?

It's nothing but a "feel good" measure. Th EUcrats probably said: "Let's pretend to be concerned about safety and put on the list bunch of African carriers, which don't even fly to Europe (that is if they actually do have any aircrafts) so it looks like we're doing something."
No one really has the guts to put on the list some Turkish or Egyptian or Russian airline, which have dozens of flights to EU every day, because there's too much politics involved.
We'll just have to wait for some Flash Air+Birgenair No.2 magnitude of a disaster to happen.

Quoting Erela (Thread starter):Why is there Phuket Airlines, for instance, and not Orient Thai?

Because Orient Thai has had none of the mishaps 9R had. All I've heard of is when HS-UTB dropped a wing panel on takeoff from HKG.

9R is (was) usually 5+ hours late, they had the fuel fiasco in DXB, unpaid fees in ICN - result was 743 impounded in LGW as well as ICN, banned from AMS. One YS11 overran the runway in Northern Thailand. Pretty much none of their aircraft passed the safety audit.

Quoting L410Turbolet (Reply 1):No one really has the guts to put on the list some Turkish or Egyptian or Russian airline, which have dozens of flights to EU every day, because there's too much politics involved

Remember Onurair?

But I agree to a large extent, it comes down to window dressing. Putting some local Congolese airline on a black list isn't going to change much for aviation safety in Europe.

Birgen air has nothing to do with a poor quality turkish airline....the rampers put CLEAR tape over the static ports on the aircraft....we knew people onboard, you really should listen to the tapes and get the facts right...

banning an airline is one thing, using an irrelevant crash to ban an airline from the same country is rubbish

In theory, there are four different ways a carrier can find itself blacklisted.

a) The airline was found by a member country to be operating in an unsafe manner for any number of reason (aircraft not airworthy, lack of necessary records, not following maintenance procedures, etc...).

b) The civil aviation governing body (local FAA) of a country is found by a member country to be totally useless/incompetent/corrupt/unreliable/etc... in which case all airlines from that country are banned (that would be Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Swaziland).

c) Same as a) and b) but the finding is made by the European Aviation Safety Agency. In practice, a) and b) would be the two cases you'd expect to be the root cause of a ban.

Once EASA or a member state reports a violation as outlined above to the EU, the EU will hold a hearing within 10 days, where the carrier/country at fault can defend itself if it so chooses. A decision is made at the hearing and effective immediately.

There are a few exceptions to these broad guidelines. If a carrier is banned from operating in EU for any reason, it can get around the ban by using wet-leased aircraft. This is true even if the ban affects all airlines from one country, provided that the wet-leased aircraft's owner and country of registration are not themselves banned. This is how Hewa Bora Airways can still operate in the EU despite the ban imposed on all Congolese carriers.